John Meis:
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis here with my partner, Wendy Briggs. Hey, Wendy.
Wendy Briggs:
Hi, how's everybody?
John Meis:
Yeah, doing great. We are also joined today by one of our senior business coaches, and her name is Kellie Black. And Kellie works with clients because of her experience, which she's about to share with you. She works with some of our most complex situations and most complex practices. And you'll see why when she shares her story. So Kellie, welcome.
Kellie:
Thank you, I'm super excited to be here today. So I've been with TTI now for a little over two years, but I've actually been in the program with TTI for probably about seven or eight years. So I've had the privilege to work with both Wendy and Dr. John, which has been amazing. Graduated in 2007 and practiced hygiene for about nine years and then quickly went into management. thought I never wanted to run a business, and there I was leading people. Throughout that transition, I was able to learn a lot from Wendy and Dr. John on how to run an effective business. What are we looking for when it comes to our numbers and between numbers and leading people. It's really what took our practice from two offices to seven practices. So I was able to be a part of one de novo, a couple acquisitions, and then we had some fold-ins along the way. So it was quite the learning experience, that's for sure.
John Meis:
Yeah, fantastic. So each of those challenges, so for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, de novo means a start, a new practice from scratch. And the term fold-in means acquire a practice that you move into an existing one. So if we have excess capacity, we can buy one that's for sale and move the patients and the teams and the doctor into an existing facility. And it's just much more efficient. and both from a clinical standpoint and from a financial standpoint. So yeah, so that's a lot of complexity though, because you're dealing with, and yours was also a specialty group with GP, which adds a little bit of complexity and a rapid growth rate, and some complicated partnership things which always pop up when practices are growing and Owners have different perspectives on how things should go, and so you managed a very complex situation extremely well.
Kellie:
Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Just a huge learning experience throughout the whole time of being there. And then along the way, it was, I think my light bulb went on and I just thought, there are a lot of other offices out there that aren't even really scratching the surface of what we've been able to do here in our small town. So I really wanted to reach out and help other practices, right? My role stepping into it was really to teach everybody everything I knew. So as I was able to learn from Dr. John, Wendy, Heather, I was able to take all of that information that I learned and teach it right within our group. So over time, I decided that I think, you know, personally I'd be more impactful if I was able to reach out and help more people. Just sometimes it's just the little things, right? The little, just the little metrics, the little things that we're working on that people aren't exactly aware of that can really help take them to the next level. So it was an easy transition coming over to TTI.
John Meis:
Yeah, well, we're absolutely delighted that you're on the team and having worked with you as a client for many years and now as a coach for years, it's really a pleasure for Wendy and I to have the opportunity to work with you.
Kellie:
Thank you.
Wendy Briggs:
we absolutely love it. And Kellie, I want to dig into our topic today. We're talking a little bit about analytics and measuring what matters. And I want to talk just a little bit about your personal experience with growing your organization from two locations to seven locations. And then I also, of course, hygienist to hygienist, right? I'm always a little bit biased towards the hygiene side. Because I saw personally what you were able to do with the amazing team of hygiene providers that you had, but let's talk about growth within your organization a little bit, not just growth on locations, but growing your people and growing your team. What I'd like to have you share with our audience today a little bit is, okay, how did you do that? How did you measure that? Where did the numbers come in? Just give them a little bit of insights as a leader, an RDH, but sitting in a leadership position. Talk a little bit about... how that happened and some of the things that you're able to accomplish as you are growing your people at the same time as you were growing your practices.
Kellie:
That's a big question. There was a lot. It was not always easy, but I think it really started with identifying what are our clinical protocols, right? What are our expectations of our hygienists across the board? So our practices were a lot of smaller practices. So right away we started just with the little things, having hygiene meetings, getting everybody on the same page clinically when it comes to diagnostic. assertiveness with our doctors, treatment planning for predictability was huge. Of course, Burt was our amazing coach. She was in there helping work us through that. And then it was really looking at the numbers. Where are we right now? And where do we want to be? So we put in our production-based compensation. So our hygienist knew that they were going to be recognized for working harder, right? For that consistent care, for consistently providing that next level care to our patients. every single time. And I think when you have multiple hygienists across a group and you get everybody together, kind of the beauty in coaching too what we see is that everybody goes through the same things. So it's nice to have just the group of everybody together being able to talk through different issues, different clinical situations that you have going on and how do you get past those objections, right? So we did, we started tracking numbers, but we also started doing monthly hygiene meetings altogether. We did quarterly hygiene meetings. We did teach backs at every meeting, whether it was sealants, fluoride, anything that we were really focused on for that quarter. Every month somebody would do a little teach back and what they found was really working for them. So it was really, really all of our hygienists played a role in growing the practice. I just wasn't a fortunate. position to be able to lead them, which was awesome. And I do want to say, I believe overall, we were able, every hygienist within our company was able to produce over $3.50 an hour for the whole year, more than their hourly, if that tells you really kind of the numbers and how many hygienists. We had probably nine or 10 hygienists at the time. So yes, we did. We definitely did reward the amazing
John Meis:
That's amazing!
Wendy Briggs:
Let me restate that just so that people are clear. So their incentive translated to an additional $3.50 an hour over what their base was.
Kellie:
Yep, for the whole year.
Wendy Briggs:
Great. Yeah, that's awesome.
Kellie:
Yeah. And then as a hygienist working there, too, before I took over into a leadership position, I remember this because I think it was a mindset that I wasn't aware of at the time, but it was we need to hire more hygiene. And I remember thinking, but there's holes in the schedule. We don't need another hygienist. And what I saw is holes, two, three, four this week. you know, five or six next week, I didn't really understand that we need more capacity in order to grow the practice. We have to have more clinical hours to grow. So even as I coach now, that is one of the things I start to see is, you know, well, our current hygienist schedule are completely full, so we don't need another hygienist. But realistically, we do need those openings in the schedule to be able to put those patients in. right? Having those openings, the goal would be to be able to fill it. So that's when we really started looking at our number of patients, our number of new patients. And, you know, something that I think is really important to track when you're leading a practice is really how many new patients you have coming in, but just as important is how many patients do you have that are leaving? You know, because I remember thinking 50, 60, 70 new patients a month. That's awesome. We're growing our practice. But in reality, if we have 80 or 90 that are leaving every month, our practice is actually declining. So if I can say there's one statistic or one KPI that I found really important right off the bat was to see what's really going on with our patients.
John Meis:
Yeah, I love that. You know, there's been such a focus in our profession on new patient flow, but far more important is the retention number that you're talking about. I love that.
Wendy Briggs:
Right. Me too, right, Kellie? And I think, you know, sometimes we run up against long-held beliefs. Dr. John and I recorded a podcast on that not too long ago about the fact that, oh, gosh, you know, if we are meeting together as a hygiene department and they're seeing what the other hygienists are doing, someone's going to feel badly if they're not up to the same level. And what I heard you describe was what we actually witnessed now, too, some of our consulting events, right? You had the opportunity of having multiple hygienists, so you actually had benchmarks and you were able to help each other grow. If you have one provider that was better at sealants than another, you were using their knowledge to benefit the growth of the group, the entire organization. We see that now too at some of our retreats and some of our events because we can have doctors that come that they only have one hygienist, but that one hygienist is able to put themselves in a room full of other providers that they're able to learn from. So we're creating a community by which everyone is able to improve. And I think that's what you described, which I think is so amazing. Now, another thing that I love too about where you are now is we're so fortunate to have you help us grow our clients, right? And every single month, you're looking at numbers and data and analytics. And so I'm curious to see if you notice any trends, right? What are trends that you see maybe that are practiced? doesn't realize they're performing very well or an area that maybe they're not performing as well as they'd like to be, that you can dial in and focus on a key statistic or a couple that can really change the dynamic of what's happening in the practice and help them turn things around. So if you had to choose just a couple of those, what would those numbers be?
Kellie:
The first one I think that is what we call low-hanging fruit. It's easy, but if you're not looking at it, you don't know. We ask our hygienist, did you reschedule all your patients from today? Yeah, of course, they're all rescheduled. Everybody leaves with an appointment. But in reality, what we see, then we pull the numbers and we actually see that, well, out of the 150 patients, there are 20 or 30 that were left unscheduled. So... I think reappointment rate is so important. It's such an easy number to track, to look at, and to wrap some verbiage around that. Right? Does this time and day work good for you? Perfect. I'm going to go ahead and put you out in six months. Of course, six months, maybe two weeks. Let's go ahead and get that scheduled. If anything changes, just give us a couple of days ahead of time. Right? So nobody, I mean, six months out is kind of tough. Nobody really knows what they're going to be doing, but at least we have them on the schedule. So I definitely think reappointment rate is one that I would start tracking. If you're not tracking any numbers as of yet, that would be the first one. And like we were talking about the growth of the practice, with that number comes, you know, reappointment comes reactivation, retention, all of those numbers, but we hear a lot that we need to get new patients, right? And then when we actually pull up those metrics, we see that there are... already a lot of active, I'm sorry, unscheduled active patients that are sitting in there, hundreds of them usually, sometimes thousands of them. So what we have there, we call an open door, open front door, but we have an open back door too. So that would be a point where we kind of put the brakes on and say, okay, let's really dive into what are we doing here when the patient comes in? What are we saying? And are we getting them rescheduled? What is it? You know, there's a breakdown somewhere. It's usually from... Hygiene to the front desk, assistant to the front desk. So how can we work on that system so we're focused on the patients that we have instead of focusing on bringing in new patients.
John Meis:
Yeah, I love that Kellie. If we don't have enough patient flow, the place to get it is to keep what you do. First place to look is keep what you've got. Existing patients are more likely to move forward with treatment and they're more likely to make a decision quickly. And you know, I think we have a greater obligation to our current patients than we do to somebody who hasn't ever been in our office. And if we're, if our Goal is lifetime improvement of dental health and keeping them in the practice, keeping them in recall is super.
Kellie:
Yeah, and I feel like that's just one of those KPIs that if you're not looking at, again, it's really easy to be very disconnected on that number. Because, again, we think that we're scheduling our patients. Well, our patients, they need a filling, so we scheduled them. Yep, they came in for that filling, and then we haven't seen them in 18 months. And we think that... we're scheduling them, but in reality, what I see with a lot of clients is there's a lot of opportunity right within the practice that they already have.
Wendy Briggs:
Yeah, and I would say, you know, right now we say it's so easy to look at those numbers. Well, historically, it hasn't been, right? Figuring out your reappointment rate was torturous before we had advanced analytics and
John Meis:
Manual.
Wendy Briggs:
into the... Yeah, You had to count. I remember, I still remember on Dentrix, it was 17 patients per page. So we'd actually have to count how many pages, count all of this, see which ones had appointments. You go through the highlighter, like it was torturous. So thankfully... those numbers are easy to access now if you have advanced analytics in your practice. Now, same thing with unscheduled patients. Now we can actually pull it up and we see a lovely pie chart, right? And I would say, and you might agree with me, but my question is, you know, one of the things that I saw early on was so few practices actually had systematic processes for going after those unscheduled patients. So you hear from the team, yeah, we're calling them, we're calling them, we're calling them. How many times do you want us to call before people get frustrated and irritated? And in my mind, it takes more than just a phone call, right? So what are you seeing practices do successfully or what are your thoughts on, okay, now we know there's 1300 unscheduled patients. What's the best way to go after those people? We all know they're important to go after. What's the best way to go after?
Kellie:
Well, really, what I've seen, especially in the last few years, a phone call is usually last resort now. I mean, with the softwares that integrate into especially the most common platforms, text messaging, it's easy, it's automated. You can set it up to how you want it set up, whether it's two weeks before they're actually due for their cleaning, or if it's two weeks after they leave and they didn't schedule. Of course, we follow the 222. There's so many different platforms out there that you can use to chase those patients that you don't have to sit on the phone because in reality the phone is, it's a lot of work. You can't just jump on the phone and call a patient. You have to see the last time they were called, was the last time they were here, what am I going to say? Did they have any restorative work done? But the text messages are automatically sent up to just go. So then it becomes how many times, that's something we talk with our practice, what are you comfortable with? How many times after two months do you wanna reach out to them? At what point do you inactivate? We really don't inactivate, of course, unless somebody decides that they're leaving or moving. But I really think there's so many tools out there now to really help recapture those patients.
John Meis:
It's so much more efficient when we can use the digital tools of email and text message and I know some people are using messenger even to contact patients. So, it's really very, very efficient to be able to do that. I think it's better accepted by the patients. A phone call, I remember at one time there was a technology that it was an automated thing that would give them a recorded message. That really irritated people and so, you know, so all these digital things make it really easy for the patient. Many people have it set up so that the patient can schedule a, you know, regular hygiene visit digitally so that they don't even have to talk to a person. And I know my eye care provider does that. My GP does it. And so, I find that really nice.
Wendy Briggs:
I prefer it. I look for that. Even to things like scheduling a massage appointment, things like that, you can actually do that via online. And in a way, I get a little bit frustrated if they don't have the technology. I'll look for somebody who does. So I think that's an important thing to consider as well, is as much as progress that we've made in understanding the value of analytics and some of these KPIs and OKRs, whatever acronym. acronyms for using objectives and key results or key performance indicators. You know, we've got to also recognize that technology has kept up with the same level of analytics. So the two together can become an unstoppable force in your practice and fueling growth. And we're seeing that. See, that's another thing that I love about your story, Kellie, is you actually experienced the growth firsthand and now you're helping others attain similar results to what you've done. And, and I know you probably have, we didn't give you any advanced heads up on this, but I don't know if you can know of anybody that you're working with right now that deserves a little bit of a shout out for growth in the last little while.
Kellie:
Oh yeah, Jackson Dental has been amazing. Year two, they continue to surpass their goals every month. They've been awesome to work with. Let's see, Dr. DeLize also has had amazing growth. Dr. Redmond in Alabama, even though their capacity blocked, it was our first conversation, they've still managed to maximize what they have and now they're doing a buildup. Dr. Wen in California has done amazing with his team. It is fun. It's really cool to see even these offices that are capacity blocked or close to being, what they're still capable of doing within the space that they do have. You know, that's, it's so awesome to see. It's awesome to put up those numbers and say, hey, you had another record month. That is awesome. Congratulations.
John Meis:
It's so gratifying to watch our clients grow and watch their teams grow, watch the leadership of the doctors grow, and the team grow. And you know, it just makes our job so fun to see all the amazing things that people do and the wonderful things they're doing for their patients. Kellie, I want to thank you very much for hopping on with us today and sharing with us some of your experiences and some of the things that you're watching for. Really good tips there on a couple of, I think, really important indicators to be watching. And that's it for this episode of the Double Your Production podcast. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Briggs:
Thanks
Kellie:
Thank you.
